Thursday, June 24. 2010
 We're asking about dinner, not lunch. At Maggie's Farm, we are believers in a weekly date night for couples, while recognizing that in some quarters the social and business dinner whirl can be so taxing that ye olde "quiet supper at home" with radio music (or NPR, of course) can be a special treat.
So please tell us in the comments
1. How many times/week do you dine out in restaurants?
2. Does it tend to be with spouse, with friends, with family (or alone)?
3. Does it tend to be fast food burger and pizza joints, or mid-range burger and/or ethnic joints, or places with tablecloths? Or, if an overseas (from the US) reader, what?
Photo is Peter Luger's "Holy Cow." NYC's best steak house, in Williamburg, Brooklyn. A great place to dine out, and not too pricey.
Addendum: Thanks for all of the replies. A real cross-section. I think folks around where I live dine out more than the average. Got room for more responses...
Wednesday, June 23. 2010
I'll take a dozen, or more.
Just across Germany's northern-most border with Denmark you'll find an incredible superstore called Fleggaard. There, you can buy everything you need - tubs of gummi bears, cases of wine, industrial strength dishwashing soap - at prices 30% cheaper than you'll find in Denmark . It is Denmark's Costco, packaged as a German loophole. This is their advertisement! The 100+ women do stunts in the air - while free-falling - holding hands to spell out "Half-off on Dishwasher at Fleggaard." You'd be hard-pressed to find a man in Denmark who hasn't seen and fallen in love with that commercial. It was geared strictly to men.
The ad is real!
I was drifting around the backwaters of my site a while ago and came across this old gem. Thought it deserved another run through the grist mill.
 The US standard railroad gauge (the distance between the rails) is 4 feet, eight and a half inches.
Why?
That's an exceedingly odd number. Why is that gauge used?
Because that's the way they built them in England, and English expatriates built the US railroads. Why did the English build them like that? Because the first rail lines were built by the same people who built the pre-railroad tramways, and that's the gauge they used. Why did the trams use that gauge? Because the people who built the tramways used the same jigs and tools that they used for building wagons, which used that wheel spacing.
Okay! Why did the wagons have that particular odd wheel spacing? Well, if they tried to use any other spacing, the wagon wheels would break on some of the old, long distance roads in England, because that's the spacing of the wheel ruts. So who built those old rutted roads? Imperial Rome built the first long distance roads in England for their legions. The roads have been used ever since. And the ruts in the roads? Roman war chariots formed the initial ruts, which everyone else had to match for fear of destroying their wagon wheels. Since the chariots were made for Imperial Rome, they were all alike in the matter of wheel spacing. The United States standard railroad gauge of 4 feet, 8.5 inches is derived from the original specifications for an Imperial Roman war chariot.
Bureaucracies live forever.
So the next time you're handed a spec and are told "We've always done it this way", and you wonder what horse's ass came up with it, you may be exactly right. The Imperial Roman war chariots were made just wide enough to accommodate the back ends of two war horses.
Now a twist to the story.
When you see a Space Shuttle sitting on its launch pad, there are two big booster rockets attached to the sides of the main fuel tank. These are solid rocket boosters, or SRBs. The SRBs are made by Thiokol at their factory in Utah. The engineers who designed the SRBs would have preferred to make them a bit fatter, but the SRBs had to be shipped by train from the factory to the launch site. The railroad line from the factory happens to run through a tunnel in the mountains. The SRBs had to fit through that tunnel. The tunnel is slightly wider than the railroad track, and the railroad track, as you now know, is about as wide as two horses' behinds.
So, a major Space Shuttle design feature of what is arguably the world's most advanced transportation system was determined over two thousand years ago by the width of a horse's ass.
Bureaucracies live forever.
Emperor, philosopher, warrior. From a review of a new bio of Marcus Aurelius which was written by an author who dislikes Stoicism:
To read the Meditations, you would not imagine them to be the writings of a man encamped in barbarian lands in the midst of war, nor of a man commanding the largest army ever assembled on the frontier of the Roman empire, nor of a man whose empire and army were in the grip of a deadly plague. The Meditations' lack of political or worldly anguish and anxiety is a mark of the philosophy they profess: Stoicism.
Tuesday, June 22. 2010
Clearly it depends on who you ask (and on their degree of sobriety). At Phi Beta, Girls, Sex, and Depression, Part 2
Monday, June 21. 2010
The invite link is here.
Stand for Israel, Stand for the West
The Friends of Israel have joined together in a new international initiative on the basis of the following convictions:
1. Israel is a Western country. With a liberal democratic political system operating under the rule of law, a flourishing market economy producing technological innovation to the benefit of the wider world, and a population as educated and cultured as anywhere in Europe or North America Israel is a normal Western country with a right to be treated as such in the community of nations.
2. Israel´s right to exist should not be questioned. In the face of a uniquely campaign of deligitimation, we remind all people of goodwill of the true historical context in which the State of Israel was re-established following United Nations Resolution 181 in 1947. We state emphatically that that decision to recognize the right of the Jewish people to national self-determination was not merely a gesture of compassion following the horrors that had befallen the Jewish people during the Holocaust. It was, above all, a recognition of the right of the Jewish people to establish a sovereign state on land in which they have had an enduring presence and to which they have had a historical claim for thousands of years.
3. Israel, as a sovereign country, has the right to self-defense. Israel is indeed a normal Western country, but it is one which faces unique threats and challenges. Israel is the only state in the world forced to fight one war after another to secure its very existence. Confronting some of the most violent and well equipped terrorist groups in the world it is also the only country whose right to self-defense is consistently and widely questioned. Today, Israel has been forced to fight on two fronts: one to defend its borders and another to defend its legitimacy. We stand with Israel, and demand that it be accorded the same legitimacy and the same right to defend itself as any other Western country. Human rights statutes designed to defend the dignity of people everywhere, laws on universal jurisdiction intended to be used against criminals and tyrants and international bodies established to secure justice, have been subverted, their guiding principles stood on their head, to wage war against Israeli democracy. The campaign against Israel is corroding the international system from within.
Continue reading "Invitation to join Friends Of Israel"
The final lines from a Robert Hayden poem posted by neoneo yesterday. A poet who understood fatherhood:
What did I know, what did I know
of love’s austere and lonely offices?
Many Moms do not know that, but they know other things. Dads know.
Saturday, June 19. 2010
 How they produce The Rumford Meteor with a staff of only 72 (Most are Supervisors, Planners and Administrators, but the head count also includes the pimply kid who goes out for coffee, donuts, pizza, cigarettes, and to pick up the police blotter - and the commission-only Head of the Sales Dept. - her photo on right, returning with a bag full of advertising contracts. There is no Editor.) is beyond me.
Tonight, The Meteor is waxing gibbous. One thing Maine needs is one or two knowledgeable Conservative pundits, but I do not know whether such thing exists any more. The Meteor needs to provide one, but what is the right "voice"?
I wonder how many folks in the Great North Woods have broadband and, from my experience with a number of woods-dwelling Down Easters on hunting trips over the years, how many of those Yankee Rednecks give a damn about what is going on outside their cabin or their pick-up. Is alcohol an issue? Um, d'ya think? Meth too, it seems to me. However, most of Maine's population is along the coast (I think. It sounds like something a knowledgeable poster might say, so I made it up). Definitely, in summer.
The Meteor covers the waterfront and, as I have said in the past, sets a standard for local/state news and info that other regional sites may envy - or use as a model. I think local intertube news/info will be the future of the local rags, but I have been wrong once or twice in my life. Sure makes sense to give it a try.
Marginally, maybe. Maybe, from being around curious, achievement-oriented, high IQ peers. From that, one might become competitive, inspired, and humbled - if one were not lucky enough to have those qualities in the first place.
Truth is, as I say here ad nauseum, that we don't know what "education" means beyond readin, ritin and rithmatic. A college degree can mean anything and nothing because becoming aware of the world and the world of the past, and the stories and the ideas of the past, cannot be fed. It must be taken. All edumacation is self-edumacation.
I think America would be better off if you could buy an Ivy League diploma online for $39.99 after answering a few questions about calculus, Julius Caesar, and Leonardo.
The Egalitarian Craze.
Friday, June 18. 2010
For a little Friday evening fun I thought I'd cobble together some of the animal videos from my art gallery. Enjoy.
Bird Apes Dog, Horses Around, Pigs Out, Is Catty With Ewe
Here's Einstein the parrot. If you watch him carefully, you'll see that he's got one thing, and one thing alone, on that beady little brain of his:
Her right hand.
I watched three DVDs on training parrots a while back, and they just live for that next snack treat. As with other animals, you find out what treat they like the most and then hold that one back for when they do a trick correctly. The parrots in the DVD were certainly eager to learn — but you can bet it wasn't for learning's sake. Like Einstein, they kept their sharp little eyes on the hand that held the treats almost the entire time.
Which isn't to diminish this bird's exceptional repertoire. Take it away, Einy!
This Dog's No Rummy
Here's 'Gin' and owner doing some freestyle dancing.
Continue reading "Cool Animal vids"
I like the idea of "truth without value." How come it took me this long to find that concept? AVI's final paragraph of The Morality of Nonbelievers:
The Christian answer, as I have suggested, may be no truer than the others. It may be just one more variation of photosynthesis. I offer here no defense of that. Perhaps there is some other explanation outside of mankind – no, it would have to be outside of life itself – no wait, it would have to be outside of this accidental planet and even the accidental universe – that would make something in morality real, and true, and valuable. But absent any such, there isn’t anything that qualifies as morality – and there is simply no meaning beyond the masturbatory for a nonbeliever to give himself any credit for having one equal to the believer’s.
I agree with everything AVI says, and I feel motivated to think harder about things which affect me which have truth but little value.
Lux et Veritas, as they say in Rome. They used to say it in New Haven, too.
Jack Fuller has an interesting essay on the future of journalism and the news, and it is worth reading if only to see how older dead-tree newspeople view the world.
I disagree with much of it, and with his premises too. Plus his brain thing is just silly. Anyway, I have no time to share my thoughts about it this morning.
An email from Nathan, our correspondent in Jerusalem:
 The head burger assembler at Burger Bar is a tall, handsomely groomed, black-bearded Samurai master of the knife. More a ridged machete or sword he wields, rather twirls, flips, flicks in a ballet of carbon-forged steel. He calls me Abelleh, "little father," as if I could have fathered such a towering genius of the blade, with a smile that dims the knife"s glistening. From my loins, not likely. But as one of my professors who served in the Pacific said when complemented for his respect towards Japanese colleagues said, "Gotta be nice to these bastards; never know whether one of 'em is mine."
I take refuge in Burger Bar after a marathon of moving, a different choreography of furniture shifting, socks disappearing, blaring badly-sung, out of tune Hasidic music blaring as the "Dosies" (those who have found haredi religion) whip away an adult lifetime's collection and disappear it into a half-container.
Only the Chagall I worried about, insured separately, and between my house and the truck, it disappeared, evaporated into the blazing Jerusalem arid air, whiffed away as if heavenward. One of the packers complained, "Chagall, Shmagal, what is this, who is this, what does it matter?" Only the insistence of my helper, Keren, and a search of many unlabeled packages was Abraham consoling Sarah as the angels come to announce her fruition, does Chagall reappear. A city of miracles, Jerusalem is. And persistence, as Keren raises her voice and pays back with interest. ("The Chagall is equal to the whole value of the shipment. You will open every box until we find it.") Tough chick.
Continue reading "Moving Day in Jerusalem"
Thursday, June 17. 2010
A buddy who is a fan of Judge Yachts emails me the following:
Those of us originally from south of the Mason Dixon line get tired of hearing about how good the Yankee boat builders were. Southern boats ran rings around those Yankee blockades during the War of Northern Aggression.
Anyway, link is to a builder who constructs Chesapeake Bay style workboats, all gussied up for fishin' and cruisin' They don't have the high, flared bow like the Carolina style hulls of Buddy Davis, but have a nice wide transom so a following sea doesn't cause problems.
Wednesday, June 16. 2010
 John Wesley (1703-1791), founder of what we now call Methodism (the term was originally used as an insult but was eventually adopted by Wesley), and his brother Charles spent some time in Savannah, GA. I lost a bet about that at a dinner party last year, which cost me a bottle of good Montrachet.
Methodism was the ultimate source of our 12-step programs: the Wesleyans liked to have methods for spiritual discipline. John Wesley was an evangelist, and liked to preach outdoors. He tried to convert the Georgia Indians.
He was a "by faith alone" preacher.
He got in a bit of a problem with a Georgia lady, and eventually returned to England. Here's a piece on Wesley in Georgia, and here's a Wesley bio.
The hymns written by John and Charles Welsey are among my favorites. Charles wrote 6000 hymns. John even produced a hymnal but, as this site notes,
Today people are much more familiar with some of Charles Wesley's hymns than with John Wesley's sermons.
Image of John Wesley above, Charles Wesley below:
Good online radio, from the Ivy League: WKCR. On Saturday they had a Howlin' Wolf festival which blew my mind. And right after, I went to hear Nozze di Figaro.
How much amazing music can a brain process in one day?
Tuesday, June 15. 2010
Thanks to our friend Marianne for reminding us of this critically important day of National Awareness and Action.
Make sure you get out there and abuse at least one of those "elders" today. More, if you can find them. If they have any grey hair, go for it. Do not beat anybody under 30, as they used to say.
If you happen to be an elder, whatever that is (related to Elderberry?), then abuse yourself in your way of choice.
I have planned my day to find a crew of those elders in line for the Early Bird Special at my local Long John Silver's. It's right next to Red Lobster, so we'll have a chance to abuse quite a few seafood-eaters.
I hate to do it, but it's for America. And, let's admit it: sado-masochism is exciting.
Monday, June 14. 2010
From a discussion about the current education of men in America at Chicago Boyz:
Boy/men seem not to be dropping out to “do” something but dropping out to do even less. The number of young marriages in which not only is the wife the breadwinner but the husband isn’t even taking care of children is increasing. These often dissolve – perhaps because women are too conventional to respect a mate who plays video games all day while they work or perhaps because women want children of their own rather than merely a needy husband. (No, I’m not going to diss a stay-at-home dad – I’m sure it is a useful choice; but many are childless marriages. Few women are at home for the years pre-baby.) And we should at least recognize that a woman does offer something in terms of child-bearing and child-nursing a man doesn’t. Besides, I don’t see choices – I see drift.
Like I always say, most men were made just for fishin, huntin, and lovin.
Addendum, from a post by AVI:
I started opining 20 years ago that feminist resentment was largely driven by women who had followed the directions and played by the rules, excelling in school - which was considered the automatic qualifier to success. We were all told To get a good job, get a good education, not just the girls. Then they left school and found that there were other, less-familiar laws of the marketplace which had seldom been mentioned. Heck, I felt the same way. Those boys and young men they had beaten, beaten fair and square at school, were finding all these other routes to success.
A re-post from Aug. '09, for Flag Day -
 All of the flags on houses in our Woodstock, VT photos reminded me that we have not had a flag since we rebuilt the side entry porch about 14 years ago.
Shame on me. It's a grand old flag.
I ordered a set from this place today. I will place the bracket low, so I can easily pull the pole out in rain or at night. I am not in favor of those night-lit flags, but I recall that Barry Goldwater had an automatic flagpole at his place in Arizona that lowered and boxed the flag at evening, and raised it in the morning.
I loved Barry, but that sort of hi-tech flagpole seems cheesy - and lazy - to a Yankee like me.
Sunday, June 13. 2010
From City State at The American:
For the first time in recorded human history, more than half of the world’s population has moved into a city or its environs from rural areas and small towns.
Considered historically, this process of urbanization has moved at lightning speed, especially in the past half-century.
Walked past the Joyce the other evening. $10 sounds good. Mrs. BD was trying to remember how many times she has seen Appalachian Spring.
I remember when old Martha herself would wobble out to the stage at the end of the performances.
A re-post -
The Greeks colonized Poseidonia - now Paestum - on the south-west coast of Italy (90 miles south of Napoli) around 650 BC. Poseidonia became the Roman city Paestum in 273 BC.
Paestum contains the finest complex of Greek temples in the world, which was discovered in 1762 by a road crew. They were built before the Parthenon was completed in the 400s (BC).
The modern town of Paestum is a seaside resort, but the reason to go there is to see the Greek temples outside of town. Our Dylanologist did just that (and brought me back a Paestum t-shirt!).
The splendid, if heavy-looking, Doric temple in this photo is known as The Temple of Hera ll.
Here's a photo of the 450 BC Temple of Hera l, later rededicated to Neptune. More info on the Hera l temple here.
Here's a photo bank of the contents of the Paestum Archaeological Museum.
A bit of commentary from the Great Buildings Online website:
When the ruins of Paestum were 'rediscovered' by 'antiquaries'�chiefly Johann Joachim Winckelmann�in the 1750s, "the ruins [were] then made widely known, and an enthusiastic appreciation of Greek art and architecture was also sparked...Because of Paestum, the Classic Revival was born with Greece, not Rome, ascendant."
� Deborah Fritz from G. E. Kidder Smith. Looking at Architecture. p16.
The three Paestum temples are all in the Archaic Doric style of heavy columns with capitals that are squat, or as Goethe termed them, 'oppressive.' By the time the Parthenon was finished (438 B.C.), columns were elegantly slender, capitals had an alert, load-bearing profile, and refinement attended every detail. Moreover, they were carved from Parian marble; Paestum's now crudely exposed shellstone shafts, it is only fair to say, were originally covered with lime stucco. As in Greece proper, the temples at Paestum face easterly so that the rising sun will awaken the statue within."
� G. E. Kidder Smith. Looking at Architecture. p16.
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